Flexible neural connectivity under constraints on total connection strength
Fig 1
Flexible connectivity under constraints.
(a) Mushroom body circuitry (cartoon based on [38]). (b) Synaptic weights occupy a K-dimensional space. K is the number of synaptic partners. The solution spaces for computational tasks are subspaces of the synaptic weight space, with dimension up to K. Constraints also define subspaces with dimension up to K. A tight constraint defines a small subspace with low potential overlap with computational solution spaces. (c) A loose constraint defines a large subspace, with greater potential overlap with computational solution spaces. (d) Cartoon of a postsynaptic resource constraint: a neuron with M = 3 units of postsynaptic weight (e.g., receptors) to distribute amongst two synaptic partners. (e) Cartoon of a presynaptic resource constraint a neuron with M = 4) units of synaptic weight (e.g., vesicles) to distribute amongst two partners. (f) Number of possible connectivity configurations for different values of K and M (given by the binomial coefficient).